


electorate

by toujours_nigel



Series: Electorate [3]
Category: Mahabharata - Vyasa
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-06-11
Packaged: 2018-04-01 19:29:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4031857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shikhandi decides to stand for elections.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aureliano_B](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aureliano_B/gifts).



> Oh, a veritable bag of notes. Mostly names.
> 
> Bheeshma = Devavrat Chakravarty, called Thakur sa'ab or Dadaji.  
> Dhritarashtra = Rashtrasen Chakravarty.  
> Drupada = Dhrupad Panchal.  
> Balarama = Vasukinath Yadav, called Vasu.  
> Krishna = Shyam Yadav.  
> Amba | Shikhandi = Shikha, or Shekhar Panchal.  
> Princess of Dasharna = Uma Yadav-Panchal.  
> Karna = Vasusen Khateek, called Vasu.  
> Yudhisthira = Ajatashatru Chakravarty, called Ajat.  
> Duryodhan = Dhanraj Chakravarty, called Dhan.  
> Bheem = Pavan Kumar Chakravarty, called Pavan.  
> Arjuna = Parth Chakravarty.  
> Draupadi = Yajnaseni Panchal, called Yajna.  
> Dhrishtadumnya = called Dhri.  
> Satyabhama = Satyaa Yadav
> 
> All the places mentioned are entirely real, down to the restaurant where they lunch. Uttar Pradesh last had State Assembly Elections in 2012, so another ought to be taking place no later than 2017. However, Bihar _is_ having elections this November, so if Shyam were real he would be run off his feet with work, and his presence in this story is proof of his great love and devotion (also best-laid plans because Shyam, but leopard, spots, etc)
> 
> What else, what else? No idea. In case of confusion, please ask.

Yajna wakes up in the morning to a barrage of texts, her phone buzzing its way to the edge of the nightstand off it to lie beeping on the carpet. She is contemplating leaving it to its fate or nudging it under the bed when Parth’s phone takes up the tune, blasting _brown rang_ discordantly into the stillness of the room. Damn it.

“Princess, if I pick that up and it’s your Dad or Dhri or anyone else checking up on you, you’re relegated to the couch for the next week,” Parth mumbles and log-rolls, taking all the blankets with him.

“The shock is that I’m having sex with someone who likes Honey Singh,” Yajna retorts, but hooks a hand down to retrieve the phone anyway. 4 missed calls, 15 texts, and 3 new conversation threads on whatsapp. The last text is from Dhri and reads, _Yajnaseni Panchal, if you don’t call me back in an hour I’m telling Parth who you hooked up with that one time in Goa. So help you God. Oh wait, he won’t._ The time-stamp allows her another twenty minutes.

It’s still strange to be walking out of Parth’s room this early in the morning without there being anything remotely surreptitious about it. They had never quite snuck around, but Parth had said something vague about _not wanting to rub it in his… their faces_ and gone an absurdly endearing shade of purple. Some day she’s going to find out which brother he had meant, and deal with it. For now, Pavan sa’ab is in the kitchen working his usual magic, and a warmed cup sits beside the coffee-maker.

“You’re up early,” Pavan says, “It’s barely eight.”

“Dhri woke me up,” she explains, and waves her phone as corroborating evidence. “I’ll catch up with you later, okay? I found a new recipe last night, and I need help with it. You’ll like it; it’s a Telengana variant of biriyani.”

“Send me a shopping list and I’ll take care of it,” he promises. “And whatever your brother wants, come back and eat some breakfast before you run off to him.”

She goes out into the garden with her precious caffeine and dials Dhri with ten minutes to go. The morning is still cool, though this late in the year no morning mists waft off the river; in a couple of hours the streets shall be hot enough to fry eggs on. Over a thousand dead last year, and already reports of the same creeping in, even only in April.

“Finally up, huh? Did Parth drug your drink or something? Are you on sleeping pills? Your goddamn perfect married life put you on anti-depressants? Or were you just sleeping with ear-plugs in?”

The coffee is bitter on her tongue, slides darkling down her throat. “If you want me to give you the juicy details about my sex life, we’re going to have to reschedule this call for a time when it’ll make my husband blush. If you want to tell me what’s got you this hyper at eight on a Saturday, feel free.”

“You have to come home, right now, and talk Bhaisa’ab out of his new insanity. He’s not listening to me, and Bhabi’s torn about it, and we don’t want to tell Babuji just yet.”

“And yet you’re so convinced he’ll listen to me.” She puts her cup down by feel at the roots of the laburnum. Petals float down and tangle in her hair. She should have braided it before she slept. “I have a family here now, it’s not like cutting classes, I can’t go haring back across U.P. every time you feel you can’t cope without me.”

“He wants to stand for the state elections in 2017,” Dhri says, and Yajna can feel all the blood in her freeze and then flame.

“If Parth and I share the driving we can be there by evening. Just hold ground till then.”

“Bring Ajatashatru sa’ab along, if he can spare the time. We could do with a thorough knowledge of precedents.”

“I’ll see what I can do, poor man’s probably asleep. Dhri, I thought you didn’t approve.”

“Wake up all the way and stop asking stupid questions. Now, do you want to call Shyam, or should I?”

“I’ll make Parth do it. Just keep breathing.”

 

They pile into Parth’s Jeep, Ajat sa’ab still muzzy with sleep and clutching a thermos of coffee like it contains the secret to immortality and the key to the universe. Beside him on the back-seat is the picnic Pavan sa’ab had had put together while she was awakening her companions and prodding them into brushing their teeth, changing their clothes, packing a change of clothes, and generally being human.

“Text me the story,” Pavan had said while she stood still and pretended not to be on the verge of running up a floor and banging on the bathroom door to hurry Parth along. “You know how Mum worries. And don’t stop at a dhaba to eat.”

They will. She’s already imagining it, stuck in stop-and-go traffic in Hauz Khas. It’s far too early to talk, and the radio is for once soothing and miraculously free of the sort of songs that Yajna hates and Parth perversely claims to like. Sector 27 is a riot of traffic and bird-song, and Parth starts humming along tunelessly with the radio. Somewhere in Noida Ajat sa’ab falls decidedly asleep again, the thermos clunking down off the seat. Parth stops under the shelter of a metro station, and they carefully put the food and coffee and bottles of water under the seat, and Parth ignores all mumbled protestations to the contrary and tips his brother into a mostly-reclining position.

“Remind me to wake him up in a couple of hours,” he says, starting the car again, “or his back will hurt. He’s been falling asleep over his books too often.”

She cranes over to look at Ajat again, a little afraid he might slip to lie uncomfortably in the space between the seats, but he’s well wedged in. The lines on his face are graven in, and there is grey in his hair. He turned thirty-five two months ago, everyone gathered on The Ridge, stamping their feet in the February chill, breath blowing visibly out, and Ajat sa’ab with his binoculars, bird watching and lit up with joy.

When she turns back around, Parth is looking half at her and half at the road. They have hit Greater Noida, and the traffic has eased off a little. “He’s younger than Bhaisa’ab. I always forget.”

“I was eight when Dad died,” Parth says, quite steady, only the hands at ten and two betraying him. Parth only drives carefully when he’s stressed. “I remember him going to Bombay. It was just after New Year, and I hated the house we were living in. Mum had just divorced him, and we had moved. I think I hated everything that winter: how cramped Old Delhi was, how intrusive our neighbours were, how Bhaiyya kept hushing me every time I wanted to see Dad. Then he finally came to meet us, with gifts, and I thought everything would be okay after that. He told us he would bring us more toys from Bombay. I didn’t know about the riots, of course. I barely knew about Madri, or why we had moved out. Bhaiyya must have been twelve… thirteen. Thirteen, I think, all of us have shaven heads in the photos from Pavan and Dhan’s twelfth birthday, and by then we had moved back to the old place. Mum was out a lot, re-establishing contacts, going back to work, and Tayiji had her hands full. Five of us, and seven of them, and then the deaths. Bhaiyya was all we had. Do I take this exit?”

It’s a question made to break the moment. Parth and she have driven the Yamuna Expy to Kampil several times a year for three years and counting. “Do you want to switch out?”

“You hate traffic,” he informs her fondly, “and every driver for a mile around hates you. We’ll break to eat near Palwal and you can take over for a while. Listen to your tunes, Princess, and let me drive.”

She texts Pavan sa’ab the bare minimum to hold her mother-in-law at bay and sticks the earplugs in. The steel and chrome of the car is blissfully cool, and the road races past while Pandit Jasraj pours Mian ki Todi into her ears.

 

At Palwal they stop and unpack three tiny individually packed pats of Amul butter, three croissants, one carafe each of orange and apple juice, and a box of strawberries. Parth drives them onto the shoulder of the road, and they eat in silence while Ajat wakes up and Yajna texts Dhri to keep up with news. All quiet on the Kampil front: Bhaisa’ab has dynamited them and gone off to fetch Dev from school. She shows the phone to Parth and watches his eyebrows go up with some satisfaction.

“I’ve never seen Shekhar raise his voice, let alone get angry,” he says, passing it back. “Doesn’t seem possible.”

“I have,” Ajat sa’ab says, stops guzzling coffee like water and surrenders the thermos to Yajna. “He used to have a vile temper when we were younger. I remember once, this must have been twenty years ago, yes about that, just after my ICSE, we had all gone to Mathura. It’s also the only time I’ve seen Shyam shout, and I hope to be spared a repeat performance.”

“At each other?” Parth asks, a little strangled by the possibility. Yajna understands the feeling. It is a disorienting thought when all her remembered life they have been as close as brothers, as she and Dhri are, exchanging conversations in glances and gestures, Shyam’s arm slung forever companionably about Bhaisa’ab’s shoulders or waist.

Ajat blinks, visibly recollects that not all troves of family lore are equally open to all members of it. “No, together against all comers. Three sets of parents, and the grand old man. Vasu had to intervene in the end.”

“I don’t remember it at all,” Yajna says. Shyam shouting is even stranger than Bhaisa’ab doing the same, and the two together is absurd. She shakes her head a little to clear it.

“”You were perhaps five,” Ajat says. “Now, one of you should tell me why we’re driving three fifty kilometres on a Saturday instead of sleeping till roused for lunch.”

Parth opens the jeep up full throttle and they skim down the road easily ahead of trucks. There is a conspicuous absence of other private vehicles, but there have been warnings issued to stay indoors if possible, so that’s easily understood: it’s getting a little late in the day for commuter traffic to Delhi and far too early for the other way ’round.

Ajat sa’ab lives up to his name. Outside the courtroom he has no enemies; Yajna has assisted him now for over a year, and has seen opposing counsel come up and embrace him after losing cases that cost their clients lakhs. Inside it there are few that can withstand him, and those few have been practicing since before he was born. Yajna feels like she’s in a mock court, defending her client’s actions, curled up in the back-seat telling him the story as she knows it.

In the end he asks, “Am I along for moral support or legal counsel?”

“I think Dhri just wants as many witnesses as possible,” Yajna says. “Possibly to restrain him, Bhaisa’ab or Babuji in any combination.”

“I’m glad we have Parth along, then. No, I take your amusement as read, dearest, don’t turn to smile at me; use the rear-view mirror if you absolutely must. Eyes on the road.”

“The only things around are cows.”

“Imagine if we kill one,” Ajat sa’ab retorts. “Now about Rao v. Mathur.”

Ajat has packed two t-shirts, one pair of drawstring pajamas, a toothbrush, hopefully underpants, his laptop, tablet, and a legal pad densely covered in minuscule notes. By the time Parth pulls up near Aligarh to refuel she knows as much about the case as she’s likely to without talking to their client.

Her friends who only travel from city to city in planes have watched _NH-10_ and told her never to go driving with Parth or her brothers, to never interfere. Parth is strolling around, inspecting the pumps and cracking wise. The attendants are grinning at him, sharing what she knows are terrible jokes. If she steps out they will be deferential, perhaps stare a little, but nobody will lay a hand on her. She has gone into blighted villages alone, into hovels and sheds and never heard a lecherous word. They know the men she belongs to: Dhrupad Panchal’s daughter, Rashtrasen Chakravarty’s niece by marriage, who would dare touch her. In any city or town or field in Haryana and U.P she is sacrosanct, as safe as a fly in amber.

She does not step out. Parth finishes supervising and climbs back in. A little way past Kripalpur he realises the case files and paraphernalia have been put away, and pulls over to make her switch. In the back-seat they trade Parth’s phone back and forth between them and talk to Shyam; they put him on speaker-phone so she can talk to him and his voice warms her through. They drive down toward Etah like flying, swift and unimpeded, and she feels that her heart is too full for speech or quick comprehension.

 

They eat at Bani Thani Palace, rubbing elbows with locals who give their party the side-eye: primarily Parth in his Levis and bright red Flying Machine polo shirt and ten thousand buck sneakers. By comparison she and Ajat sa’ab look practically plebeian in their plain dark kurtas and dark jeans. They don’t like dark women, out in the heartland; they don’t much like women at all. Parth is darker than her, storm cloud dark, both he and Shyam. Somewhere up the tree the Yadavs married into a Chhatisgarh tribe. Or didn’t marry.

Ajat sa’ab, wide awake, well-fed, and desperately bored, orders them both into the back and takes the wheel. She curls up against Parth and pretends not to notice his eyes on her in the rear-view mirror.

At 3:00, half an hour out of Etah, there’s a call from her Bhabi. Parth, who forgot as usual to charge his phone, has taken hers and startles when it starts ringing.

Bhaisa’ab had gone off to the U.S after college, putatively to do graduate work, and came back without breasts or a degree and with a decorative penis, a deeper voice, and a slim androgynous body. She had been seven at the time, and cannot remember ever having a sister, comes across old photographs sometimes of a beautiful stranger in the flared jeans and crop-tops of the nineties, or pressed into spangly salwar-kameezes. In conscious memory there’s only Bhaisa’ab, handsome like a prince in a fairytale, perfect son and brother and husband, always obedient, always collected, always pulling everyone into group activities and Dhri and her and hapless party workers out of trouble and Bhabi out of bad moods.

He’s not around in the background, teasing her, though. There’s only Uma, sharp, snappish, and weary, saying, “I’ve told Dhrishtadyumna to hand his voter’s I.D back, and to get a child’s ration slip again, if he’s going to go crying to his older sister for everything.”

“He’s fifteen minutes older than me,” Yajna says, regressing automatically to adolescent efforts to justify herself, quite often to Uma’s unimpressed face.

“The first-born twin is the younger one,” Uma says, pat. “Not that age seems to make a difference, Shekhar’s fifteen years older and he’s acting like Dev does when refused a toy. How many of you are coming? I need some notice if I have to feed Pavan, or the cook will quit again.”

“Just Ajat sa’ab and Parth and I,” she says. “We’ve had lunch, and we’ll eat whatever you put in front of us for lunch and criticise nothing.”

“Calls her husband and jyeth by their names, girls these days, honestly,” says the woman who has never called hers anything but Shekhar. “I’ll try and get everyone in order. He hadn’t even told Mai, can you imagine? That boy’s running for an M.L.A post in two years, this is why we can’t have nice things.”

Etah is a bare 70 kilometres away from Kampil, four-fifths of their journey done and dust, and Ajat has a lead foot that sees it done in rather less than an hour through the glowering sun and thickening traffic. He slows down once they cross into the town proper, beetles through it with every scrap of attention paid to traffic rules, and speeds up again once they’ve crossed the sprawling suburbs into open fields again. Their fields, newly sown and bright green with shoots yearning for rain.

“Have you decided,” he asks, making a sharp right to enter the long driveway, “your stance in the matter?”

“It doesn’t need deciding. He’s my brother, where he leads I follow.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some playing around with names. The Kauravs are all Chakravartys, nice land-owning sort of title. Vasusen is a Khateek, a Scheduled Caste that now works a butchers (among other things) and was once a Kshatriya sub-caste which used to sacrifice animals for yajnas in temples.

The year they turned ten, Yajna and Dhri had been packed off with school trunks to Dehradun to become Welhamites. Babuji had gone to Welham Boys. There were photos in old albums and a few in frames, of a boy with a determined chin and upright posture in a brown blazer and tie. There still are, for his fiftieth birthday they had one touched up, enlarged and framed: Dhrupad Panchal, aged all of seventeen, taking gold medal for shooting, the rifle still slung over his shoulder.

Bhaisa’ab had been a Welhamite too, worn blue and white like Yajna, been a Hoopoe like Yajna, been captain of the basketball team and led them to state championships like Yajna. At home there are no photographs of this time on the walls. No albums either, though sometimes stray photos of Bhaisa’ab’s tenure in a female body turn up tucked into old books or the leather flap of diaries: once a strip of passport-sized photos that had been used as a bookmark fell out of The Count of Monte Cristo while Yajna was reading it. She had hidden it away and asked no questions, anymore than she ever had at school where trophies inscribed Shikha Panchal thronged her days.

Sometimes it feels as though she has always kept her mouth shut when it comes to Bhaisa’ab, taking only what is offered and never pushing, even when all she wants is to help. They are not as a rule a quiet family: she has been fighting with Dhri since before they could either of them speak, and the long summer after her ISCs had been a prolonged argument with Mai and Babuji until she packed her bag and left for NLU; Mai and Babuji fight sometimes about his work or the three of them or just for fun; Dhri goes off like a firecracker whenever denied. A family given to flaring tempers and heated words, and Shekhar Panchal purest ice in the midst of it all, getting his way without resorting to raised voices or fists, and the devil take the hindmost. If Ajat sa’ab hadn’t told her she would never have known he could raise his voice. When he wants something enough, then, when he’s desperate enough. Like he wants this, if he’s shouted at Dhri about it. Though dynamite might just mean Bhaisa’ab’s usual mode of wrecking arguments and destroying hopes with a blank stare, with Dhri sometimes it’s difficult to know exactly what he means. It’s difficult to think of Bhaisa’ab shouting, it makes him mortal, reduces him.

To the eye he is implacable as always, coming smiling out to clap Parth on the back and nod at Ajat sa’ab and hold her close, his body relaxed and his gestures easy as though they’ve dropped by for an impromptu holiday. He is the only one so cheery: Babuji’s smile is strained, and both Mai and Bhabi clutch a little too hard, and the usual mob of party workers is conspicuously absent. The whole house seems to be holding its breath. Her spine creeps like they’re in a disaster film, trailing Bhaisa’ab up to her old suite, dumping the bags and saying she’ll meet them downstairs, stripping off and standing under the shower to let it pound the weariness from her muscles. Any moment the shower curtain will move and reveal a man with a knife, a flock of angry birds will rattle the windows, a phone call will come from inside the house. She really needs a haircut or to give in and learn an easy updo off Youtube, everything she knows requires an hour minimum and two maids good at following directions.

When she comes out shivering into the cold air, ineffectually patting at her hair, Parth is sitting cross-legged on the bed thumbing through her phone. “After we’ve got it into Shekhar’s head that this is ridiculous, let’s go down to Kochi for a few days. Namrata’s there, says we’ll really like it. Sent you a text, see?”

“I’ve got Rao v. Mathur in another week, babe.”

“Bhaiyya’ll give you the time off; just say you’re stressed out. We’ll go down there and just lie around on the beach and look at all the art and have French food.”

“I couldn’t lie to Ajat sa’ab and leave him with the whole workload. You should take a shower, it’ll help a bit.”

“Bhaiyya’ll cope, he always does. And it wouldn’t be a lie, Princess.” He reaches out, pulls her down and digs thumbs into her shoulders, the upper reaches of her back. “You’re like stone here.”

 

They go down and talk to her parents, play with Dev. Occasionally Bhaisa’ab will chime in and remain part of the conversation for a minute or five, but his attention is split largely between the quiet road and Bhabi in the huge kitchen supervising their dinner. It’s barely dark.

It is a bigger house than they need, even with each laying claim to a suite, even with the outer aangan and its rooms taken over on a permanent basis by party-workers too busy or too broke to live elsewhere. There is another mahal beyond this, the proper domain of the women of the household, and of the domestic staff.

Three generations ago the house had been full of cousins and uncles, but now it fills, by luck, only for Diwali. Everyone has left. Even she has left, though daughters have tradition urging them on and she returns as she is able. Two sons living in the home and the elder raising a child is more than most parents get, in small towns in the depths of Uttar Pradesh, and going away to school or law school or to Delhi to practice she had never felt it betrayal, any more than Dhri’s year at St. Andrews, or Bhaisa’ab’s abortive trip to the U.S. Coming home from the crowded bustle of her husband’s home she feels sometimes a ghost in her maike, sometimes a revenant. It is all so quiet. A passing thing, with Dev pushing seven and engrossed in school, and Dhri sure to be married off this year or the next, and then more children to love and make much of and her own, someday soon, to bring to their nanihal and drag back still complaining at the end of summer. The inevitable rabble will be back tomorrow, rubbing shoulders over their narrow desks and smiling to her and asking after her health, her husband, her brothers-in-law, and more surreptitiously their cousins.

She leaves Ajat sa’ab holding forth on some intricacy of jurisprudence that she would follow if only she lent her mind to it, and which Babuji can just about grasp if brought down to practical matters, and goes hunting for Bhai sa’ab, cornering him on the steps leading from their mahal outwards, to the offices. In the light of the hanging lamps his hair is bronzed and the colour of his skin blinding gold, his kurta-pyjama tinted orange. In the summers Dhri wears a t-shirt for company and with much grousing, but Dhri’s masculinity, adulthood, aren’t earned things, and there are heavy scars on Bhai sa’ab that still look like pitiless wounds. He turns as she goes up to him and tucks her under an arm, the sun to her shadow, and rocks a little: up on the balls of his feet and down again on his heels. A lullaby of embraces, to soothe a fractious child to sleep.

He kisses her hair, rests his forehead against her crown, rests some of his weight on her, and says, “If you’ve come to stop me, you might as well not have.”

“Bhai sa’ab,” she says, a laugh beginning to bubble up her throat, “who has ever been able to stop you? I wouldn’t have come all this way to try something so stupid.”

“Good girl,” he says, and presses her a little closer. Beneath her ear his heart is a gentle sound, every word he speaks a rumbling through bone and flesh, the thump of his blood underlining it. Her blood. “And Ajat and Parth?”

“Parth will do as he’s told. Ajat sa’ab’s the one to convince in that household.”

“He always was,” he tells her, “even when he was quite small. You’d think Pavan, or one of the twins, they were the ones running wild. But every decision had to go past that little book-worm. Shyam told me it used to drive Prithaji crazy some days, and Chakravarty sa’ab all the time. He would have to explain himself to this earnest boy of fifteen who would blandly pass moral judgement. Well, we’ll see. If Shyam can twist them all up, there are other avenues.”

“If you’ve got Shyam with you, you can stop thinking of other avenues,” Yajna says, and Bhai sa’ab laughs a little and wraps his arm tighter around her waist.

 

Dhri comes in triumphant.

They hear the car minutes after Bhabi has finally sorted dinner to her liking and come to sit among them, wedged into the couch between Dev and Parth, both clamouring about equally for her attention. Bhaisa’ab has been drawn into Ajat’s conversation with Babuji, and Yajna has finally given herself over to a long gossip with Mai when it rumbles up the path, shattering silence.

Yajna springs up, barely says, “I’ll go,” and fairly runs from the room. She hasn’t met Dhri in two months, an unconscionably long time when she used to find excuses to go up to Scotland about as often.

He must see her coming, framed in the hard orange of his headlights, because the car comes to a halt with an abruptness at odds with its masterful handling. Then Dhri is a body in space hurtling towards her, and they meet with a crash that flings them backwards, arms clutched about each other, sharing breath, forcing their hearts to thunder and quieten at the same pace.

“I missed you,” Dhri says, and lets go of her, stepping back still shaken, beginning to smile.

“You need a haircut and you’ve locked Shyam sa’ab in the car,” she answers, and comes down with him to pretend to be the sensible one. It’s rare that she gets to play the part.

She hasn’t met Shyam since her wedding, nor Satyaa, who flat out refuses to answer to -ji, -di, or -bhabi. Before that it had been in Goa, and her wedding hadn’t really been the time to talk. Neither is this. If it were Shyam alone she would have resigned herself to burying this deep, until it suits his convenience, but Satyaa is disconcertingly straight-forward, for a politician’s daughter, niece, and wife.

“No hugs for me?” she says, and Yajna steps hesitant into her arms, inhaling her perfume. Satyaa smells unfailingly of petrichor, the earth wet from rain, promises faithfully to buy Yajna a bottle every time they meet, and is as unfailingly refused. Yajna likes how it smells coming off her skin, cool and pale.

“You had much better have been my sister,” Shyam says. “We share so much. Subha’s nothing like me, no tastes, no features, not even the colour. Where you and I, look how we match.”

“So she’s the sensible one? Devakiji must be so relieved,” she says, and ducks to avoid being clouted.

Dhri is watching them carefully. Dhri knows, but only part of it, not about Satyaa at all, and not really about Shyam. He caught a glimpse of her dancing on the beach and then coming back to her room in the morning, and has been teasing since, but he doesn’t know, or he wouldn’t have survived a drive shut up close with them.

He looks triumphant, glowing with it in a way Yajna can’t help shrink back from in distaste, when he leads them into the drawing room. But Bhaisa’ab is smiling also, and he and Shyam thump each other on the back, embrace for a long moment and whisper, before Shyam goes round the room exchanging greetings, clouting Parth in lieu of Yajna, hurriedly stopping Ajat sa’ab’s pranam, dodging Babuji and Mai’s attempts to stop him from the same.

Bhabi says, “Let’s eat first,” and offers Satyaa a perfunctory embrace on her way out of the room.

 

Dinner is delicious and nobody does it justice save Dev and Shyam, who chatter and eat oblivious to the tension ratcheting through the rest of them. If she were new here Yajna would wonder why they’re all pinning their hopes on a fixer whose home grounds are primarily in Bihar, when this is not yet even a matter for the party, but Shyam has been working miracles her whole memory. He knows everyone down to the bleached bones, and if he uses it for the good of the party, that overlaps but barely with the good of those who comprise it.

Back in the drawing room with Dev shuffled off to his ayah and sleep, he smiles around and says, “So what we really have to decide is the seat. Everything else will fall into place after that.”

“Is that all,” Babuji says. Dhri looks to have lost the ability to speak.

“Of course. Without deciding on the seat, we can hardly strategise. I accept that someone as veteran as you always has a basic plan, but the specifics are also important. Now, I would have said Govindganj or Kesariya, because nobody I support can lose there, but it’s in November, so if you want that we won’t be able to delay at all. And it might be better to defer a little. He’s a known man, our Shekhar sa’ab, but not as a candidate. Give him two years, let him do some real good, this place is hungry for development, if he promises a few schools or a more efficient irrigation plan, they’ll fall over themselves to vote him in. That’s easy enough. Now, if he runs from, let’s say Kesariya, because Satyaki wants Govindganj, if he runs from Kesariya it’ll give him a lot of time to prepare for Lok Sabha, but he’ll also be tied to Bihar for the duration. And what do you know of Bihar, Shekhar sa’ab, and what does Bihar know of you, eh?”

“So you want him to run,” Bhabi says, and glances around with a barely suppressed smile.

“Uma, I told him to run three years ago from Bareilly, and he refused. You were there. What happened? We had to let it go to the Bharadwajs and they lost; Chakravarty sa’ab didn’t even have any excuses. Well, it was good dowry for Yajna, and nobody’s complaining. Sit down, Parth. Your Bhaiyya knows the truth of it. But it’ll have been five years by the time the next elections roll around, and we should at least have someone to suggest in the alliance.”

“At least you remember there’s an alliance,” Ajat sa’ab says, and smiles a little, distantly.

“I’m depending on it,” Shyam assures him, over-sincere. “So, where was I?”

“Trying to convince my macho little brother that it’s not a great political mistake to let a transman stand elections,” Bhaisa’ab says, and having it out in the open seems to ease everyone except Dhri, who blanches and mutters incoherent protest. “Oh come on, that is exactly your problem.”

“I know you’re a mard,” Dhri replies, and colours terribly, but holds ground. “But everyone will see you as a hijra. I just want to avoid that happening.”

“Chivalrous,” Bhaisa’ab murmurs.

“Hijras have won seats before,” Ajat sa’ab says. “Shabnam Mausi, very openly. And now with the new rules in place, which is why you’ve waited so long, of course, there’s no reason for him not to stand. You did,” he continues mildly, “ask me here for a reason?”

“Our scholar. Now, as I was saying, a seat.”

“He’s not running from Bihar,” Babuji says, and raises a hand to forestall replies. “If he’s winning on anyone’s reputation, it should be mine. Farrukhabad isn’t what it used to be, but it’s faithful. We’ll put him up at Amritpur, or I’ll speak to Rashtrasen sa’ab, and we’ll sort it out. Maybe Manth or Goverdhan if Shyam still wants to help after he’s had his fun playing puppet-master with all of us. But not Bihar, not yet. He’s not ready.”

“I’m not standing from Farrukhabad,” Bhaisa’ab says, and smiles to disarm. “No, Babuji. It’s a good place, poor but faithful. The people persevere, and we should give them more. Schools, irrigation, hospitals, all the things Shekhar said, and we already knew about. And I’ve been working here and in Bareilly for ten years, people know me. Whether for myself, or for you, they like me. For you, they’ll vote for me, but not enough of them, and I don’t want us to lose any seats. We need to have control of Bareilly as well, not lose Farrukhabad to my vanity project.”

“You’re planning to lose,” Dhri says, with enough betrayal in his voice that Yajna at least knows he was hoping to be proven wrong.

“I’m planning to run,” Bhaisa’ab says. “I can’t decide to win or not, but I can minimise consequences for us.”

“We were thinking of Budhni or Basoda,” Bhabi says. “I know your relation with Daddy was wrecked for a while, but that’s years ago. He’s thinking of going out of politics anyway, and he’d be glad if either of us moved back and took over.”

“Sehore’s a good district to go up from,” Shyam says, nods, smiles in an unnerving fashion. “But why not Meerut?”

“There _is_ an alliance,” Ajat sa’ab murmurs, slyer than she would have expected.

“Hastina’s a reserved seat,” Satyaa says, “your lot’s running Vasu Khateek from it. That leaves three constituencies in Meerut, and then Kithore.”

“Meerut’s all tied together, too difficult to disentangle,” Shyam says.

Bhaisa’ab finishes, “But there’s always Kithore.”

The three of them smile, each to the other, and Bhaisa’ab reaches over and takes Bhabi by the hand. Yajna stiffens, presses herself against Parth’s side, runs a hand down his spine as soothingly as she can manage.

“But that Dadaji’s constituency,” Parth says. It comes out weak, betrayed. “He’s stood for elections from Kithore since it first became a constituency.”

“Maybe he’ll want to retire,” Bhabi says, as though she’s suggesting they have chawal instead of roti and not something epoch-changing and thoroughly impossible. Thakur Devavrat Chakravarty is a fixture of U.P politics, enormously old and enormously vital, the sort of old man you have to kill with an axe and it’s still even odds which will lose.

“You want Dadaji to give up his seat so that Shekhar can lose it.” She’s never seen Parth angry. Not properly, not like this. She’s heard stories, of course, but Pavan sa’ab’s the angry one. Ajat sa’ab and Shyam reach out to tug him back into his seat, still fuming, and trade an amused glance over his shoulder.

“No, no, not give up,” Babuji says. “I’ll give him Farrukhabad for it, or trade Kaimganj to one of your quota boys. This sort of thing happens in politics, beta, you can’t take it personally.”

“There is an alliance,” Yajna says, and leans over to kiss Parth on the cheek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end, my friend. I cannot write actual elections.


End file.
